Self-proclaimed tree surgeon was grounded by crash

By TIM STANLEY World Staff Writer - 11/7/2009


HOMINY — Few of the oaks that Jack Thomas spent his professional life scaling were as sturdy or resilient as the self-dubbed "tree surgeon" himself.

The late Skiatook tree-care specialist found his grit severely tested, though, in a tragic turn that stripped him of his career and much more, family members say.

Thomas and his daughter were traveling on a rain-slick, two-lane highway in 1997 when an approaching vehicle skidded across the line.

Thomas's daughter was killed in the ensuing head-on collision. He was thrown through the windshield and spent the next few weeks in a coma, clinging to life.

"It was his stubbornness that helped him survive," said Misty Barton, Thomas's granddaughter. "But he could never do much after that, and that was hard for a man who had been so active."

The man who had spent his life in the treetops was effectively grounded, learning to walk again only with a walker.

But one more tree should help his family remember the good times, they say: the one engraved on his tombstone.

Jackie Norman Thomas, 77, died Oct. 28 in Sand Springs, where he was living in an assisted-living facility.

He was buried Wednesday in his hometown of Hominy.

Barton's mother, Janice, was Thomas' only child. Her death in the accident, which he didn't learn of until he emerged from the coma, was a grievous blow.

"People say I look a lot like my mother, and oftentimes after that he would call me by her name," Barton said.

Barton remembers her grandfather as a practical joker who loved to tease his grandchildren and acted as "kind of a monkey" when it came to trees.

Thomas began working with trees in his teens, learning how to trim them. He eventually parlayed that experience into his own business, she said.

Self-taught in the trade, Thomas would scale trees of all kinds to render trims and treatments and helped growers produce hybrid fruits including tangelos.

In his spare time, he enjoyed taking road trips to the tree-thick Ozarks of Missouri and Arkansas.

"He had been working right up to the time of the accident, and I'm sure he would have kept working as long as it was physically possible," Barton said.

The family decided to have a tree engraved on Thomas's tombstone, a fitting marker for a man who put his life into limbs.

"He had always called himself the 'tree surgeon.' That was part of his identity and what he loved to do," Barton said.

Thomas is survived by a brother, a sister and three grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.



Tim Stanley 581-8385
tim.stanley@tulsaworld.com


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Tulsa World Reader Comments
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Few Clothes, America (11/7/2009 11:51:57 AM)
He sounds like a decent, hard working man. I am sorry for your loss family members. May he rest in peace and trim trees in Heaven.

owl, Tulsa (11/7/2009 11:56:23 PM)
Nice story. Bet he hated seeing the 07 ice storm damage to the trees. R.I.P. tree surgeon, Thomas.



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